International comparisons

International comparisons by many scholars regarding quality of life have over the years tended to indicate a strong relationship between economic growth and quality of life. In essence, these comparisons have shown that there exists a positive relationship between gross domestic product and the living standards of individuals in a country. While this may be thought of as being true given many researches conducted by many scholars, historical experience tend to negate this belief.

The timing of improvements in the quality of life in terms of health, education, happiness, material levels of living and civil rights tend to be different from that of improvement in gross domestic product per capita income. In essence, some indicators of improved GDP precede improvements in the living standards while others come after these improvements. On the other hand, different parts of the world experience different levels of quality of life improvements and at other times, the indicators of quality of life tend to remain static despite huge changes in the level of real per capita income.

In this sense, there exists strong evidence that points to the fact that improvements in the level of economic growth in most countries does not necessarily translate to improvement in the quality of life lived by citizens in those particular countries (Maddison, 1995, p. 65). Some scholars have argued that improvement in real gross domestic growth per capita can never be equated to improvement in the living standards or the quality of life in any given country.

In this context, wealth creation can not be seen as been a guarantee of huge and broad improvements in the living standards of the population in a given country. On the contrary, some countries tend to exhibit average levels of income or similar levels of gross domestic product yet there exists a big difference in the quality of life in these countries in terms of education, health standards, civil rights and the like. Moreover, evidence proves that some poor countries in respect to the level of gross domestic product exhibit high levels of quality of life as compared to rich countries (Landes, 1998, p.

45). Given the above discussion, it would be impossible to totally disclaim the fact that economic development improves the quality of life in some countries. Despite the fact that it cannot be solely attributed to improvements or changes in the levels of living in many countries, there still exists some kind of relationship between quality of life and economic growth of a country. There are various benefits which can be harvested from economic growth and which can be reflected on the quality of life enjoyed by citizens in a particular country.

To start with, economic growth increases the level of consumption in a country given increase in the amount and quality of goods available to the consumers. Given the assumption that that consumption is related to the level of utility extracted from a given commodity or service, high consumption translates to greater prosperity. In essence, economic growth will imply that the consumers will have a range of quality products to choose from and at competitive prices since industries will be competing to gain a high market margin compared to the others in the same line of production.

Goods and services will then be offered at lower prices and demand will increase given the law of demand as illustrated in the (fig. 1) below. As economic growth of a country increase, competition in the production of goods increases more and more and assuming that the market is a free one, the prices of these goods and services tend to decrease whereas the quantity demanded will increase. In other words, consumers will tend to increase their consumption given the lower prices (Steckel, 1986, p. 41).

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